Friday, December 28, 2018

So, I feel like my Kingdom Death painting is mostly recognizable for my play with light. Here are a few I've been painting that show off the bleak side of the setting, and these paint jobs are more than a little influenced by Dark Souls (including my own practice with its board game adaptation).

Monday, December 17, 2018

So, I have something to admit: I've actually only been on the sidelines for 8th edition, rebuilding my 40k collection for a while since I'd purged it maybe 15 years back. That means this is my first 40k fight to return to in a long time (I think I played two heavily proxied games in 7th when we were starting to test the GW waters).

Monday, July 30, 2018

Honestly, I was pretty happy to get a chance to paint the Kickstarter edition of Hannah. I think the model has a decent pose, and think she's got just a great rules set (we'll see about next edition...), and basically the only issue I have with the model is she's huge.

Way more importantly, though, she's pretty cool looking and actually has the gear represented by her rules: It still mystifies me, why the standard edition doesn't even represent her weapon.

Friday, July 27, 2018

Honestly, the Raider/Ravager redesign some years back had me extremely sorely tempted to start an army for my personal collection. I think the vehicles are just fantastically well-designed, as a mix of the original design and an updated, more explicitly pirate-themed look that evokes classic sailing (mostly) without feeling out of scale.

These are, of course, painted for the Mandrake army I've been adding to for the last while; I was going for pretty much as sleek and stripped-down look as I could get, while letting that teal really pop. I repurposed the "squad" look, with helmeted captains/pilots (heads from misc. dark elf kits), and, with a little tweaking, got it so the sponsons are actually replaceable.

Friday, July 20, 2018

Some of you readers may have noticed my posts have been a bit sparse, recently. So, this post will be a little different than usual, in that I'm stepping a little outside gaming, painting, or reviews, to say a little about myself.

The short version is, describing my life right now as "tumultuous" would be an understatement.

Tuesday, June 26, 2018

Note: the Tinkerer's summons are based on some of Wyrd's old Arcanist models.

I've learned, over the years, that I very often gravitate towards generalists that neither excel at one thing nor do they ever really lack a tool.

These classes and characters tend to be devalued, specifically because they're not very straightforward: They're not tough enough to be the tank; they're not strong enough to be a glass cannon; in this case, the Tinkerer doesn't even have enough support to be dedicated support.

In short, they're tricky and don't tend to be very spectacular, and are often even moderately flawed in their design, since even the designers need to go in without such an obvious direction and that can mean a class doesn't run well, or doesn't run well within the intended role. But, I find them immensely rewarding to play once I understand them, so I thought I'd share some thoughts on Gloomhaven's least-loved class.*

Thursday, April 12, 2018

A quick one, today: my fairly standard take on the Gloomhaven Rogue Scoundrel.

This is the only of the starting classes my group hasn't played yet; it looks pretty neat (and better than the two overt fighters we currently have played), but not a lot to say past that... Also, this is the only model from the starter six that saw no modification; while a bit traditional, I thought the Scoundrel was a solid sculpt.

Monday, March 19, 2018

Despite it being extremely frustrating to build, I think the phoenix just looks so cool when it's done.

I've played around with this model a lot over the years, and think that on this one I've hit a very nice balance of spectacle and darkness on this one. While the lighting is a bit artificial in how broadly it hits the model, I'm really happy with its core, and how the light accentuates the feather texture.

By the way, blending between teal and orange is... pretty rough. Don't try this at home, kids. It took a lot of tricks to make that one feel at all natural.

Wednesday, March 7, 2018

So... I honestly didn't understand just how consistently blue my client meant when he asked for his monsters in blue.

I've already done a few blue Hands, but I was pleasantly surprised how dramatic and ghostly the King's Man and Butcher turned out. I think the Butcher's back was the biggest surprise, giving a completely different feel (IMHO) to the mode.

Monday, February 19, 2018

Another quick* post today, continuing the Mandrake force I've been working on, and wrapping up its infantry units.

Conceptually, these aren't much different than the previous Witch conversions, but I'm still very happy with how I got these wings to look.* That would be short, not speedy subject matter.... and yeah, probably no one else saw that unintentional pun.

Tuesday, January 23, 2018

In many ways, the Deathwatch army conceptually has just about everything I want in Marines (not to mention its origins in Artemis, a character I've rambled about as a model with honest-to-goodness symbolism behind his construction). I haven't given my fledgeling collection enough love, so, here are a couple more of them.

Friday, January 12, 2018

This was an interesting little project: I was trying to match my earlier work on the Union, which was in monochrome orange/natural light, but match that with trying to give Benediction (above) and Grace (below) the look of golden armor, in non-metallic metal.

Thursday, January 4, 2018

Continuing the Mandrake army, this is my take on Dark Eldar Warriors for my client's army, in what feels a lot more like a collaboration than many commissions I've done, as it's often a bit of bouncing ideas back and forth for these conversions. It's a little odd that they're segregated by sexes, but, with very similar color schemes, some more obvious visual cues should make an army of little dark pointy elves easier to tell apart. The purple ones are, again, the unit leaders, while the blue ones are special weapon troopers. I went out of my way to find shield and armor pieces for these ladies, to try to emphasize a slightly more defensive mode than the standard Mandrakes.

Unlike my preference for "Drukhari" over "Dark Eldar," I definitely don't prefer GW's switch to calling these base models "Witch Aelves," since, most naturally, that means that the entire race should be being pronounced "Eelves" which just sounds silly. The models are nice, though, and the freehand runes came more naturally than I expected.